LUniversité du TravailDavid EVRARD

Exhibition catalogue.

The first artist invited solo to the BPS22, David Evrard (Liège, 1970) was inspired by the history of the General Management of Cultural Affairs in the Province de Hainaut (DGAC) and by the Université du Travail to develop a special project. Born in 1921, in the context of the approval of the "Eight hour day law", the DGAC put various social activities in place, in a prophylactic perspective: artistic education, theatre companies, musical fanfares, etc.

Starting from there, David Evrard was committed to images built on "artistic models", becoming the visual archetypes of workplace conditions, in particular these images of workers by Constantin Meunier, Pierre Paulus or Antoine Bourlard acquired by the Province of Hainaut, reproduced and widely circulated. These images transmitted aesthetic values which were internalised by the population, to the point of being perceived today as the components of an identity pattern. With these historical data as a starting point, the artist developed a way of thinking in conjunction with the creation of an aesthetic taste, using fiction as a means of constructing reality, archives as a process of identity inception, etc. These thinking processes were formalised through installations, photographs, videos or old works and period objects that the artist appropriated to put his apparatus in place.